Chapter Sixteen Next Game

  Jester's gaze shifted to the last item, a home computer.

  This is also what he worries about the least, and it will be his greatest capital for competing with others in the future.

  Atari is now undergoing massive layoffs, and new boss Jack Tramiel is determined to turn Atari into a computer company, which has caused widespread discontent among employees, especially the hardware engineers who worked on the VCS7200.

  What Trammel did was almost as good as destroying their own children with his own hands!

  The VCS 7200 is actually one of the best home consoles of this era, and in a ranking of home game consoles by the famous gaming website IGN, the VCS 7200 was listed alongside the Famicom as one of the top ten strongest consoles of all time.

  If you were to use a large sum of money to entice them at this time, and let them continue to develop a brand new, not inferior, and even surpassing VCS 7200 home console, to prove to Tramiel that he is wrong.

  Those Atari hardware development elites will surely flock to it, enough to get a large number of the best hardware engineers in this era.

  It is also enough to develop a home game console that is completely comparable to FC.

  Moreover, in his own mind, there was still a memory of Sega's MS mainframe, and Jester thought somewhat lightly.

  Sega Master System, abbreviated as Sega MS, is an excellent 8-bit console. In terms of functionality, the MS has a crushing advantage over the FC, similar to how the PS4's 1080p surpasses the XBO's 720p.

  Although this home console was released in 1986, Sega released a brand new MD (MEGA-DRIVE) console just two years later, also known as the Sega Genesis. This wasn't because the MS wasn't excellent enough, but rather because Nintendo had established such a strong advantage on the Famicom that Sega had to enter the 16-bit era ahead of schedule in order to compete with Nintendo.

  Jest had a Sega MS console at home when he was young, and later on, out of curiosity, he also studied the architecture inside it. Of course, he also studied FC, although not very proficiently. But now, if he has a large number of hardware R&D elites to help him, it's not too difficult for him to produce a home console that is not inferior to FC in terms of machine performance before the end of the year.

  Moreover, FC's function is not particularly powerful in this era either.

  As for the game, Jester furrowed his brow.

  Chao Ma indeed wanted to do it, because this game was the key to winning in the 8-bit era, but to make its own host version, at least wait until the host's R&D has progressed halfway, and basically all parameters are clear.

  In addition to this game, he has many other options.

  But before his console can really sell in large quantities, there won't be many powerful game companies making games for his platform.

  So, in the early stages, it can only rely on him alone, or his own company.

  During this period of time, which may be several months or half a year, he must produce enough and classic games.

  Contra is a game, Super Mario is a game, Snake Rattle 'n' Roll is a game, Green Beret is a game...

  Jester wrote one game name after another on the letter paper and crossed out those that he felt were not suitable.

  Jester didn't stop until nearly fifteen minutes had passed.

  Six titles, this is the number of debut games he set for himself, among which two must be sensational works, and four slightly inferior ones, but also fun.

  From now on, two to three new games will be released every month, one of which is a masterpiece.

  So, you can't put all the most classic ones at the beginning, which is not conducive to squeezing out the remaining value and is very unwise.

  Super Mario, Contra. These are the two masterpieces that Jester has decided to launch first, which can cause a sensation. As for Shamanro Snake, Green Army, Red Fortress and so on, although they are also excellent, they cannot be used as the first issue.

  The founder of modern electronic games, creating all the game rules with "Super Mario", and the game called "Contra" which is considered as a textbook for side-scrolling action games, these two games were enough to boost his console sales.

  When his host numbers are sufficient, those third-party game manufacturers and talented independent game studios will flock to him.

  And he can be sure that if he could have launched his console in '85, Atari wouldn't even be a competitor in the North American market.

  By the time they finally arrived in North America with their NES in October, the market had already been largely claimed by others. And after playing iconic side-scrollers like Super Mario and Contra, who would still be interested in their Donkey Kong and Mario Bros., which were static-screen games?

  Please, now it's all about scroll-type games.

  As for their Super Mario, Jester smiled disdainfully. He dared to come out and he would definitely win the lawsuit.

  You say you're independently developed? Are you kidding me! Haven't you seen that Huo Xing Entertainment released theirs half a year ago? And with such a high degree of similarity, you claim you didn't copy? Who are you fooling?

  If either Dante or Shigeru Miyamoto wants to ruin their reputation, Jest is more than happy to send them off.

  As for counterattacking the Japanese market?

  Jiest smiled slightly. Without mentioning the world-renowned Super Mario, he also had in his hands games that would later be hailed as three of Japan's greatest RPGs.

  Even if time is not enough and three products cannot be made, even if only two products can be made, even if the Japanese people support domestic enterprises again, they can still take away a considerable share.

  Moreover, whether it is this era or the future era, the home console's main battlefield will always be North America. Whoever dominates North America will dominate the world.

  This is an industry consensus.

  But...

  Jester continued writing on the letter paper. These games would have to wait until his home machine's parameters were basically determined before they could be developed, and now he couldn't do it even if he wanted to.

  But if one creates a game company, it's impossible for the company to survive on just this "American Block" alone.

  Having recruited so many employees, hardware R&D personnel have their own work, and software R&D must also have its own tasks.

  Jester didn't have many options either, before his own host was released, he could only make money by doing interesting and fun arcade games.

  As for PC games? Jester thought for a moment and shook his head. Although he had previously mentioned the idea of Minesweeper to John Carmack, that was just a ploy to keep Carmack, the genius, in tow. Moreover, before 3D technology emerged, PC games were no match for console games, with a tiny market share.

  And even if PCs enter the 3D era, consoles will immediately follow suit. In the field of gaming, the gap between PCs and dedicated game machines is just too big.

  At least as late as 1988, Jester had no plans for a major entry into the PC games market.

  Nothing else, PC's capabilities don't allow it anyway.

  To say something unpleasant, even the smooth scrolling on PC has not been completed yet, until John Carmack overcame this difficulty technically more than four years later.

  At that time, as a Carmack fan, Jest knew how to solve the biggest difficulty in designing games on PC, 'scrolling smooth movement', otherwise he wouldn't have wanted to do Super Mario on PC from the start, but the question is, why did he want to do so?

  It used to be because I didn't have the conditions and wasn't aware of it, so I wanted to do Ultra Mario on PC first, but now that I'm aware of it, why is he still doing this?

  Are PCs going to compete with game consoles for market share?

  How could Jester possibly do such a thing?

  What game is that?

  Jester is thinking hard, first of all, the team he recruited is a new team after all, high-difficulty games are definitely not suitable, they should do some simple but interesting games to get familiar with each other's colleagues, grind their tacit understanding, and then move on to higher difficulty.

  So some scroll-type games were ruthlessly cut off by Jester.

  It's not that these games are not good enough or can't be made, but they're just not suitable.

  Then there's only still images left.

  So-called static screen refers to the game's background being fixed and stationary, such as Jester's previous "American Blocks", whereas on the other hand, scrolling levels refer to the background moving smoothly like a scroll as the character moves, such as in "Super Mario".

  Those that roll left and right are called horizontal rolling, those that roll up and down are called vertical rolling.

  Don't look down on this technology, from the 1974 Atari PONG to the first truly meaningful arcade machine in 1980, when Eugene Jarvis, Atari's top designer at the time, solved the problem of smooth scrolling background images on the arcade machine and created a groundbreaking game - "Defender".

  Eugene Jarvis himself received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2005 GDC for this achievement.

  Perhaps most people have never heard of his name, but he is the fifth designer to receive this honor, which shows how high his status is.

  And the previous four are not unfamiliar names in game history: The first year Will Wright, the father of SimCity, the second year Yuji Naka, the father of Sonic, the third year Gunpei Yokoi, the god of hardware, and the fourth year Mark Cerny, the younger brother of Jest. And the one he got later, if you are a fan of DND or Western RPGs, you must have heard his name, nicknamed "The King of Britain" Richard Garriott, the designer of Ultima, also the founder of Origin Systems.

  "Still frame..."

  Jester furrowed his brow, this type of game is Japan's authority, especially with Atlus, their Donkey Kong was a hit in the US back then, and just from that one arcade game alone, they made over $1.25 billion in a year.

  Even now, Donkey Kong is one of the most popular arcade games in the United States today.

  Which one should I choose to counter Donkey Kong?

  Dig Dug? Bomberman?

  Jester shook his head, not because the two games were bad, but because they were both released this year and could compete with Donkey Kong. As for whether Hudson had already released them or not, Jester was unclear, but he knew that even if they hadn't been released yet, their completion rate was already very high, and making these two would obviously be a collision.

  After these two were eliminated, Jester continued to think. To be honest, he didn't play many static screen games, especially not this type similar to Donkey Kong.

  "Snowman brothers?"

  After about ten minutes, Jester saw a small snowman decoration on the table and suddenly thought of this East Asian project that was first released in 1990 on arcade platforms and later ported to FC. Then his eyebrows relaxed instantly.

  Snow Bros. is considered the pinnacle of static screen clearance type games, pioneering the Snowman mode and influencing many later games such as Rainbow Islands and Dust Digger, and it was more than enough to counter Miyamoto's Donkey Kong when he was still immature in game design.

  After writing down "Snowman Brothers" on paper, Jester also let out a breath of relief, and his expression became somewhat more relaxed.

  His next game is "Snow Bros".